Houthi attacks on Israel dismissed as propaganda as group presides over hunger crisis

The Houthis have surprised some defence analysts this year with extremely long range missile and drone attacks on Israel

A Houthis hypersonic missile named Palestine 2 used in Sunday's attack on Israel. Reuters

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A Western government official, giving a detailed off-the-record briefing to The National, has condemned Houthi attacks on Israel as a simple attempt to distract from crisis at home, including “organised corruption”, economic collapse in areas it controls and growing abuses, including arrests of UN aid workers.

Israel’s latest air strikes on energy infrastructure in Hodeidah on Sunday have added to the misery of the Yemeni people, who are already suffering from electricity, food and fuel shortages.

The official told The National that the Houthis sought to boost their regional standing and political leverage through their military campaign against shipping in the Red Sea, which carries about 30 per cent of containerised trade and is blockaded by the group.

The group claims its actions are in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, intended to force Israel into accepting a ceasefire.

Firefighters attempt to extinguish a fire at a power plant following Israeli air strikes on Hodeidah city, Yemen, 29 September 2024. EPA

But they miscalculated with attacks on Israel, “which isn’t playing that game”, the official said. A US and UK-led naval coalition has conducted strikes on the group, which it claims are self defensive, as well as intercepting missiles and drones fired at civilian shipping. An EU-led naval coalition is dedicated solely to intercepting Houthi attacks.

Amid this backdrop, Israel’s heavy aerial retaliation has shocked some observers and, in July, led to UN calls for restraint. The latest attacks have plunged most of Hodeidah into darkness, killing at least four and wounding 30.

Israel’s air strikes follow a Houthi ballistic missile attack on Israel on Saturday, one of several believed to involve Iran-supplied weapons. As with Israeli strikes in July, which followed a successful Houthi drone attack in Tel Aviv, the key port of Hodeidah under the group’s control has been heavily damaged.

Israeli air strikes on Hodeidah port cause massive flames and casualties

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Strikes over the summer, by some estimates, left the port at 30 per cent capacity, devastating fuel storage and dockside cranes. But for propaganda purposes, the group appears to think incurring severe retaliation is worth the cost of launching strikes on Israel.

“Houthi leadership sought a canny strategy to use events like this to attempt to try and distract from their failed governance and economic programmes,” the official said.

The official said Houthi strikes had questionable military impact. Israel’s subsequent heavy bombing of critical port and energy sites has worsened an already serious humanitarian crisis. Yemen is among the world’s 10 poorest countries and areas under Houthi control suffer chronic food shortages, the inability of the group to pay salaries and disease outbreaks such as cholera.

Much of Yemen is facing a mounting crisis of malnutrition, reeling in the wake of decades of conflict. In Houthi controlled areas, aid distribution has been complicated by a crackdown by the group on aid workers that has seen at least 13 UN employees detained, and an unknown number of other aid workers.

But for the Iran-backed group, success “was a missile reaching Israeli airspace. After that they just make it up and seek to persuade the Yemen population to believe their propaganda regardless of truth or not”, the official says, in reference to their exaggeration of any damage to Israel.

Hypersonic or just symbolic?

The official emphasised a point, highlighted by several defence experts, that the ballistic “Palestine 2” missiles recently fired at Israel, billed as “hypersonic” weapons, were neither hypersonic nor Houthi in origin, thought by analysts to be Iranian Fattah 1 missiles.

To achieve ranges of 2,000km, experts say significant weight reductions – to maximise fuel and range – would likely mean a far smaller warhead than typical ballistic missiles which are designed for high impact strikes, levelling buildings.

It’s not clear exactly how powerful the smaller Houthi warhead was, but in the first Palestine 2 attack, the missile was intercepted by Israeli air defences. While the missile was likely travelling at considerable speed, it is not considered a “hypersonic weapon,” by the US definition – which is a weapon that not only travels at five times the speed of sound or more, but one that can also evade missile interceptors.

This is a considerable engineering challenge, because the forces produced by extremely high speed, such as drag, mean that attempting to change course suddenly could break up the weapon. Friction heats up edges of aircraft to thousands of degrees Celsius above Mach 5, reaching 2,200c at Mach 10. The Houthis claimed their weapon reached Mach 16 – a speed that would melt all but the most high tech materials.

The US also said it was not likely that the Houthis had a hypersonic missile. But the headline grabbing attack was useful enough for the group, the official said, helping distract from a “serious humanitarian crisis in the north,” under the group’s control, and Houthi abuses, including “organised corruption, locking up humanitarian workers on pretext of being spies, who in fact are just ordinary Yemenis who were working for UN,” and the crew of the Galaxy Leader,” the official said.

The 25 crew of that vessel, a cargo ship seized by the Houthis in November, had been imprisoned for almost a year under false pretences, the official said.

Crew members of the Israel-linked cargo vessel Galaxy Leader seized by Houthi fighters and anchored off the coast of Yemen's Hodeida, meet a delegation of the International Committee of the Red Cross on September 25, 2024. AFP

“Locking up humanitarians, burning ships full of oil in the sea, firing missiles – it’s all failing to stop the country falling further into disaster.”

Ahmed Al Shargabi, a researcher at the Yemen Policy Centre, said that Israel is increasingly targeting the economic and infrastructure assets in Houthi areas to disrupt the group’s financing and logistics.

“Hodeida constitutes the Houthi supply artery main artery, through which they receive weapons from Iran,” Mr Shargabi said by phone from Cairo, adding that the area has also been a landing site for Iranian and Hezbollah military personnel who provide back room support for the Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping.

In the short term, however, Israel remains more concerned about securing its direct border, directing the bulk of its military capabilities towards neutralising Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Mr Shargabi said.

Red Sea campaign

The Houthis have launched a number of drones and cruise missiles at the Israeli port of Eilat, which has been largely closed for nearly a year, losing most of its revenue.

Meanwhile, Israel can import much of what it requires through its Mediterranean ports, accepting slightly higher costs, an issue now faced globally amid high inflation. Most Houthi weapons aimed at Eilat are shot down or land in open areas.

Meanwhile, Egypt has lost billions of dollars in Suez Canal revenue due to the Red Sea blockade, while food aid costs for war-torn Sudan, where half the population of 50 million face hunger, have soared due to the blockade.

By contrast, Israel has been able to wreak economic havoc on the cash-strapped Houthis.

“The effect the Israel is seeking is to undermine the economic resources of the Houthis,” Mr Shargabi said, adding that through Hodeidah, Houthi linked networks receive Iranian fuel and gas that is sold in the domestic market, providing the group with a major source of income,

The attacks, he said, could “undermine their financial situation and focus their attention more on the internal front, and create confusion in coastal areas under Houthi control.”

Mr Shargabai said that by degrading Houthi economic capacity even further, the Israeli effort could indirectly help the US and its allies mount wider strikes on the Houthis, if Washington chooses to take more decisive military action to keep the Red Sea open.